Dear Mom,

There's no person that a girl could be any closer to, after all you protected me from the outside world for nine whole months while I developed and grew inside of you, you can't get any closer than that.

You always made sure I was dressed to the nines. Whether I was brand new or two years old, I had a hat, blanket and bloomers to match my frilly dress or jumper. My teeny tiny toes were usually painted even when I could barely walk and as soon as I stopped putting my hands in my mouth you'd paint my fingernails too.

When I started school, I know you had a harder time leaving me there than I did, you only sent me to half day kindergarten so I could still spend time with you.

You taught me the basics of reading and writing before I went to school, I don't remember a time when I didn't know how to read or write thanks to you.

You made sure that I had the best education that I could get, that I was in the best school that you could find for me.

You took me shopping before school started every year and made sure I had new dresses and a brand new pair of Stride Right patent leather shoes and socks with the frilly lace on them to match.

You made sure that my birthday was still special and a day of its own, even though it's three days after Christmas and most of the time my friends were all gone for break.

You always made sure you did what was best for me, even if it was hard. You brushed it off and held your own when you pulled me out of my private school to homeschool me and faced a lot of criticism from the people we knew at the school and even your family members. But you still kept me at home anyway all the way until graduation.

You made sure that the schoolwork I did challenged me. You let me take high school English and chemistry and history my 8th-grade year. You let me take online classes when the ones that were offered locally weren't enough. You made me retake algebra until I understood it so I wouldn't have to put a D on my transcript. You even let me go to college my junior year for two classes a semester so that I could get ahead of the game and not waste my time with meaningless classes that I didn't need anyway.

You helped me through the agonizing times that came during my second semester of my senior year with the ACT's, graduation and finishing up my high school classes. I know I was probably miserable to be around sometimes, especially the two weeks before I took the ACTs but you did everything you could to make me not feel stressed out about anything.

You were crazy enough to let me try hockey, probably the most expensive sport there is, when I was 14 years old, way past the average age that someone jumps into it. But you bought me gear and found me somewhere to play and things that I could to help me improve my skills.

You fought tooth and nail with people at the state level when the rules for girls hockey and the age classifications were making it hard to field a team for my age group and you let me fight with you.

You never told me to sit down and shut up, you taught me that my opinion mattered and that when I believed in something that I should speak up about it and stand up for what I believe in. You encouraged me to enter the Right to Life Oratory contest and sat through so many drafts of so many speeches throughout high school that I can't even count.

You were there for me when I lost the State Right to Life Oratory contest when I didn't even place and was absolutely crushed and then eventually angry. You told me there was more to it than just getting up in front of like-minded people and speaking and you told me that I may not have won the competition but I was going to do more than win some speaking competition that was way too political.

You've supported me every step along the way and let me become my own person and make my own decisions with what I want to do with my life. You taught me that it's okay to go against the grain and do things like play hockey when most girls don't. That it's okay to be the only girl in the group of thirty kids in your class of 500+ that are majoring in sport management.

You've been there for me no matter what, especially since you moved me in to college in August. You've always answered the text or the call, even when it was almost midnight and you'd been up since 7 in the morning and you came and got me and took me home for the night anyways. You sat there and listened when I cried over boys, you never made me feel ridiculous for feeling the way I felt.

You've bussed me around my entire life and never pressured me to learn how to drive even though it would give you a huge break if I could just drive myself places sometimes. You took me to every Adrian College hockey home game for the last six years, not to mention the away games you've taken me to at all hours of the day and night.

Thank you doesn't even begin to say what you deserve to hear and if there was something more meaningful than thank you that I could say, I would.

So thank you time a million.

Love,

Your Daughter